


Bruce Banner and the Curse of the Girlfriend Sweater

by AnUnexpectedMuffin



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Knitting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 16:47:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4572117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnUnexpectedMuffin/pseuds/AnUnexpectedMuffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yes, knitting can be a helpful way for Bruce to manage his stress and frustration. Except for when it can't. <br/>(And Steve is truly shocked at the number of important legends contemporary society seems to have forgotten.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bruce Banner and the Curse of the Girlfriend Sweater

As an Avenger, Bruce Banner did not actually hulk out all that often. True, the Hulk came out every time there was a supervillain attack, but then as Tony Stark liked to point out, there was little point in having a giant green rage monster on the team if you only used him for his brain. And besides, Bruce was not allowed to count the supervillain attacks when adding to his “list of times I have hulked out unexpectedly,” the upshot of which being that he had been maintaining the list for over a year and had gotten, thus far, to three:

There had been the time he and Tony had started sifting through a possibly mad scientist’s computer, looking for evidence that he was trying to cross the common cold with Ebola, and discovered that he was also deeply into child pornography.

There had been the time someone called Sam Wilson a racist slur (the sudden appearance of the Hulk, who had proceeded to pick the Falcon up with great tenderness and then growl at anyone who attempted to get near, was generally considered a good thing, as it prevented the media from noticing that Steve Rodgers attempted to strangle the perpetrator and had to be sat on by both War Machine and Iron Man until he calmed down.)

And there had been the time Pietro squirrelled every pot and pan in the entire Avengers Tower away under his bed and left Bruce with nothing to make soup in. (What, exactly, Pietro was _doing_ with all those pots and pans nobody, least of all Pietro, could figure out, although Wanda had exasperatedly muttered something about “not going to attract Dad with all the pans in the kingdom” before making her brother put them all back.)

So Tony Stark was more than a little alarmed to wander into the living room one evening and find it occupied not only by Steve Rodgers and a large box of colored pencils, but also by the Hulk.

“Hey guys!” he announced nevertheless, because he needed to retrieve the tablet he’d left on the side table that was…behind the Hulk…

(It was, Tony felt, rather mean of Rhodey to snoop through whatever stuff Tony left lying about when he came to visit. Insisting that doing so was “so I have some _warning_ before you add a chainsaw blade to my suit. Or _your_ suit for that matter!” didn’t strengthen the argument, and anyway the chainsaw blade worked very well except for the time it gave Natasha an impromptu haircut. So Rhodey was _not_ going to get a peek at the newest theoretical designs, lest he do something like pooh-pooh the roller skate idea.)

“I’m just going to sneak past you,” Tony continued, “And—what are you doing, Steve?”

Steve’s hands were occupied, not with pencils and his sketchpad, but with a circular knitting needle and a heap of delicate lavender-grey yarn.

“Triage.” He announced grimly. “But I think we’ll be able to save it—look Hulk, you guys just purled when you should’ve knitted.”

Hulk inclined his enormous head and made an inquisitive noise. Then he traced one large finger across the yarn tangle in a way that must have made sense to Steve, because he nodded encouragingly and said, “yeah, see? Ribbing is tricky sometimes. I’m gonna do a row or two to get you started and then I think you’ll be good to go.”

And then he…did. Tony watched, fascinated despite himself. Hulk watched with an increasingly relieved expression, until he gave a huge sigh and shrank back into Bruce, who looked dazed and confused.

“Hey Bruce, what set you off this time?” Tony asked, snagging his tablet.

“I was…um…Icouldn’tfacethethoughtoffroggingit,” Bruce muttered sheepishly.

“Huh?” Tony asked.

“Ooh,” Steve said sympathetically.

“Bruce, I didn’t catch that.” Tony said. “What do frogs have to do with anything? Oh no—tell me something hasn’t happened to Thor again—”

“I couldn’t face the thought of frogging my knitting.” Bruce said, more clearly but no less sheepishly.

“Mom made me redo the heel of the first sock I ever did three times.” Steve volunteered.

“Bruce, that sounds vaguely obscene,” Tony noted. “I’m so proud of you!”

“Frogging just means undoing your knitting, Tony.” Bruce sighed. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find a shirt and then hide in the hulk-proof room in the basement and try to finish this before Betty’s birthday passes me by.” And so saying, he scooped up his knitting, thanked Steve, and headed for the elevator.

“It’s kinda sweet that he’s making his girlfriend a sweater,” Tony said.

“Not a sweater,” Steve said, collecting his colored pencils and going back to a seascape (the tentacle monsters they’d fought last week prominent in the foreground). “ It’s going to be a very nice hat. And anyway, Bruce and Betty don’t need a curse on top of everything else.”

“A curse?”

Steve blinked. “Well, yeah, you never make your boyfriend, or girlfriend, a sweater. It’ll end the relationship.”

“What.” said Tony, who had never even considered the possibility of knitting curses.

“Ask anybody!” said Steve.

(In the end, Tony was forced to concede that there was, in face, a knitting curse, since Pepper, Sam, Wanda, Amora the Enchantress, Happy, Jane Foster, Jean Grey, Doctor Doom, and Nick Fury all agreed that it was very serious business. And Betty liked the hat very much.)

 

 


End file.
